Monday, December 21, 2015

Educators
often ask me which of my books would work best in their classroom. So this
year, I’ve decided to feature a book each week and highlight related teaching
materials and strategies.

Zoom
in on Fireflies is perfect for visual literacy lessons. In addition to clear,
simple text, it features fascinating close-up images inside “zoom bubbles” that
highlight a firefly’s key body parts. The photographic lifecycle diagram at the
end of the book introduces readers to yet another way of presenting information
visually.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

For the last few weeks, I’ve been discussing
the two nonfiction writing styles—narrative and expository. Many great books
fit snugly into one category or the other, but then there are the outliers.

For example, some nonfiction books that are
expository overall, include narrative sections at the beginning and end.
And when you really think about it, all narrative nonfiction is a combination of narrative scenes that
give readers a bird’s eye view into the people/world being described and
expository bridges that link the scenes. The expository sections provide necessary background while
speeding through parts of the true story that don’t require close inspection.
The art of narrative nonfiction lies in pacing, which means choosing just the
right scenes to flesh out.

As long as we’re talking about the necessity
of expository passages in narrative writing, I’d like to point out that
expository text also exists in many-a-popular fiction books. A good example is
the following passage from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

“This,” said Wood, “is
the Golden Snitch, and it’s the most important ball of the lot. It’s very hard
to catch because it’s so fast and difficult to see. It’s the Seeker’s job to
catch it.”

“You’ve
got to weave in and out of the Chasers, Beaters, Bludgers, and Quaffle to get
it before the other team’s Seeker, because whichever Seeker catches the Snitch
wins his team an extra hundred and fifty points, so they nearly always win . .
. A game of Quidditch only ends when the Snitch is caught, so it can go on for
ages.”

Both Harry and the
reader need to know how Quidditch works, and this expository passage provides all
the information we need.

Okay, back to
nonfiction.

Lately, I’ve begun
to notice that a growing number of nonfiction books contain roughly equal
amounts of narrative and expository text. The author moves seamlessly from one
writing style to the other, creating a blended style that serves the subject
well.

Here are three
examples. I’d like to add a few more titles to this list, so please let me know
if you can think of some.

Monday, December 14, 2015

Educators
often ask me which of my books would work best in their classroom. So this
year, I’ve decided to feature a book each week and highlight related teaching
materials and strategies.

Don’t
be fooled by the title. Out of this World Jokes about the Solar System is more than just a book of jokes. It also
contains basic information about plants, moons, comets, asteroids, and more.

And that’s not all. The backmatter includes a
6-page section about how to write jokes using a wide range of language devices,
including alliteration, homographs and homophones, and rhyme. There’s no better
way to get students to engaging in authentic word play.

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

This week’s topic
is one of my favorites—expository nonfiction. As far
as I’m concerned, this is a golden moment for expository nonfiction because, in
recent years, it’s gone through an exciting transformation.

Once
upon a time, it was boring and stodgy and matter-of-fact, but today’s
nonfiction books MUST delight as well as inform young readers, and nonfiction
authors have risen to the challenge. The books they’re creating feature
engaging text, often with a strong voice, as well as dynamic art and design.

Just as there are two
distinct kinds of narrative nonfiction, there are two types of expository
nonfiction. Facts-plus books focus on facts as well as overarching ideas.
In other words, they present facts and explain them.

Fast-fact books focus on
sharing cool facts. Period. They inform, and that’s all. These are the concise,
fact-filled books that groups of boys love to read together and discuss.

Some people don’t have a very high opinion of
fast-fact books, and to be sure, they don’t build reading stamina or critical
thinking skills, but they do motivate many reluctant readers to pick up a book,
and IMHO that alone makes them worthwhile.

Why do students need to be exposed to a diverse array of
expository texts? Because it’s the style of nonfiction they’ll be asked to
write most frequently throughout their school careers and in their future jobs.
Whether they’re working on a report, a thesis, a business proposal, or even a
company newsletter, they’ll need to know how to summarize information and
synthesize ideas in a way that is clear, logical, and interesting to their
readers. Today’s expository children’s literature makes ideal mentor texts for
modeling these skills.

Here are some great books in each
expository nonfiction category:

Facts
Plus

A Black Hole Is Not a HolebyCarolyn Cinami DeCristofano

Born to
Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World by Lita Judge

Monday, December 7, 2015

Educators
often ask me which of my books would work best in their classroom. So this
year, I’ve decided to feature a book each week and highlight related teaching
materials and strategies.

The
clear, simple text and stunning photos in
Why Are Animals Red?are perfect for
teaching students about animal adaptations. You can start your lesson with a fun Readers Theater script that
I’ve written to accompany the book. I’ve also created a Teachers Guidethat makes connections to a wide variety of NGSS and Common Core
standards.

For an innovative Reading Buddy experience, try a
same-grade-level pairing in which an emergent reader shares Red Animals (two simple words per page)
and a more advanced reader shares Why Are Animals Red? I guarantee great
results.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Educators frequently ask me for strategies
for reading nonfiction aloud. It can be tricky. If a spread is bursting with
text features, which should you read first? At what point should you read the
main text? What about the captions? Should you discuss the photos or
illustrations? How much time should you spend on each page?

I don’t think there are any absolute answers
to these questions, in part because what works well for a third grader class
may not be appropriate for first graders. In addition, the children in each
class may bring different kinds of prior knowledge to the reading experience.

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Carol
Scrimeour, the fantastic teacher-librarian at Essex Elementary School in Essex Junction,
Vermont, read my book No Monkeys, No
Chocolate aloud to a group of first graders, and I was so impressed with
her method that I wanted to share it here.

The main text on the first spread of the book
ends with an ellipsis (as does the main text throughout the book). After
reading the words, she explained what an ellipsis is and how it’s used.

She let students know that they would
encounter more ellipses as they read the book, and encouraged the children to
say “dot, dot, dot” as a chorus each time an ellipsis appeared. After
discussing the artwork briefly, Carol pointed out the bookworms in the corner
and read their dialog. As the students laughed at the joke, Carol let them know
they’d see these same bookworms again. Then she turned the page.

As Carol finished reading the main text on
the second spread, the students all said “dot, dot, dot” right on cue. Then
Carol shared the secondary text, the artwork, and the bookworm dialog.

After the students had a good laugh, Carol
did something that had never occurred to me but worked like a charm. She
re-read the main text before turning the page. This helped to maintain
continuity from one spread the next, so students could more easily keep track
of the book’s main ideas. Brilliant!

This is a strategy that would work well with
any book that has layered text. You may want to give it a try.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

I’ve written about
narrative nonfiction many times before on this blog, and yet my ideas keep
evolving. For a long time, I’ve felt that there are two distinct kinds of
narrative nonfiction, but I was having trouble articulating the differences.

Luckily, a Tweep
came to my rescue. During a series of conversations with Mary Ann Cappiello,
we were able to identify some of the differences and develop a descriptive name
for each category.

As part of that
dialog, I looked up the definition of story
and this is what I found:

“a real or imaginary
account of people and events told for entertainment”

I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that all stories are told for
entertainment, and plenty of children’s stories focus on non-human characters,
so here’s my own workimg definition:

Story--a real or imaginary account of people/creatures and
events.

Most fiction writers would say that a story also needs a narrative plot arc
(see diagram) and a conflict that is resolved by the end. To be sure, narrative
nonfiction biographies and books about historical events include both of these
elements.

But I l prefer my working definition because it makes
room for a subset of narrative nonfiction that I’ve struggled to define. It's
most common in science-themed picture books that describe a
natural process, such as the cycle of a storm or the typical daily, seasonal,
or annual activities of a single animal or a host of animals living and
interacting in a specific environment.

I have been
calling these “cycle stories” for some time, but because I didn’t
have an umbrella term for the more common history/biography titles, I kept seeing
cycle stories as anomalies. But thanks to Mary Ann’s recent comments and my
recollections of a conversation I had with ElizabethPartridge several years ago, I’m now giving the “traditional” narrative
nonfiction the label “plot”. Because they do have true narrative arcs with
conflicts and resolutions.

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About Me

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 180 nonfiction books for children. Her lifelong fascination with the natural world led her to earn a B.S.
in biology and M.A. in science journalism. When Melissa isn’t writing or speaking to children or educators, she’s usually exploring natural places near her home or around the world.